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He trembled with excitement as he climbed down from the seat. "Abbie Snover! Ab bie!" he called. "I got somethin' for you! A package all the way from China! Just you come an' look!" Jim East lifted the package out of the delivery cart, carried it up the steps, and set it down at Abbie's feet. "Just you look, Abbie!
She was not quite forty years old, but so aged was she in appearance that another twenty-five years would not find her perceptibly older. And to the people of Almont she was still Abbie Snover, or "that Snover girl." Age in Almont is not reckoned in years, but by marriage, and by children, and grandchildren.
Abbie Snover didn't know, yet she had walked all the way to Mile Corners in the cold. He couldn't understand it. "What'd you come for, anyhow, Abbie Snover?" "Now, Owen, you wait!" Owen Frazer's wife turned to Abbie: "Got lonesome, did you, all by yourself in that big barn of a house?" "I want to talk to Old Chris," Abbie repeated. "Was you so fond of him, then?" Abbie made no answer.
Pretty cold out, ain't it? Have a chair." Abbie did not realize how numb the cold had made her body until she tried to sit down. "Maggie, give her a cup of that hot tea," Owen Frazer continued. "She's been almost froze, an' I guess she'll have a cup of tea. Hey! Miss Snover?" "I want to talk to Old Chris." "Talk to Old Chris! Talk to Old Chris, you want to?" Owen Frazer looked at his wife.
She sat for a long time looking at the labels. She wondered if the queer Chinese letters spelled ABBIE SNOVER, ALMONT, MICHIGAN. She opened the album again and hunted until she found the picture of Tom Thorington in his guard's uniform. Then she placed the labels next to the picture, closed the album, and carefully fastened the adjustable clasp.
Owen Frazer went over to the sink and looked out of the window at the bed-tick smoldering on the rubbish heap. Owen Frazer's wife pushed open the door of the sitting-room, then stood back and turned to Abbie: "You may be fine old family, Abbie Snover, but we're better. You turned Old Chris out, an' now you want to talk to him. All right, talk to him if you want to. He's in the parlor.
Abbie waited until Jim East drove away in his delivery cart. Then she sat down at the table in the parlor and opened the album. She found her name on one of the labels ABBIE SNOVER, ALMONT, MICHIGAN, U. S. A. It seemed queer to her that her name had come all the way from China. On the card that said that the plant was a dwarf orange-tree she found the name Thomas J. Thorington. Thomas? Tom?
"That Abbie Snover came to my house," Mrs. Perry told Mrs. Rowles, "an' said my Hugh had been a-couplin' her name with Old Chris's in a nasty way. An' I told her " "The idea! the idea!" Mrs. Rowles interrupted. "An' I told her it must be so, an' I guess it is," Mrs. Perry concluded. Mrs. Rowles called upon Pastor Lucus's wife. "Abbie Snover an' Old Chris was seen kissin'." "It's scandalous," Mrs.
"Why, there's Abbie Snover," said Jennie Chipman. "She's turnin' down the road to Mile Corners," added Judie Wing. Aunt Alphie Newberry opened the door to the three women: "Whatever's the matter to be bringin' you callin' so early?" "Ain't you heard yet?" "We come to tell you." "My! my! my! What can have happened?" Aunt Alphie exclaimed. "Old Chris died last night "
The things that made the people of Almont interesting to each other and drew them together meant nothing to Abbie Snover. When she had become too old to be asked in marriage by any one, she had stopped going to dances and to sleigh-rides, and no one had asked her why. Then she had left the choir. Except when she went to do her marketing, Abbie was never seen on the streets.
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